WHY ARE SOME OF OUR BEST CATHOLIC WRITERS NOT CATHOLIC?

Japanese novelist Kenzaburō Ōe’s A Personal Matter says more about being for life—all of life—than all the anti-abortion screeds ever written. Along with his wife, Ōe raised a brain-damaged child (and two others) into adulthood, and the theme of the wounded child, the imperfection that shatters our lives, runs through much of his work.

These are works about humans, written by humans, that treat of the human condition. To be Catholic is to be curious about and affectionate toward other human beings, no matter how disturbing, wayward, and annoying we find them. Because that is how Christ finds us.

Any recovering drunk off the street will tell stories of his day-to-day life that are gripping, stimulating, thought-provoking, poignant, and grounded in the deepest morality of all; namely, that the problem is not other people; the problem is us. In his way, he tells Gospel stories: about demons being driven out, the blind being made to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk. Still bearing the wounds, but nonetheless, walking. Holding out a shaky hand to the next person.

And he is funny.

That is Catholic.

Film-maker Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped) wrote that he wanted to help men and women “discover the matter they are made of.” "Where have all the great ones gone?" asked Andrei Tarkovsky. another Catholic-in-spirit film-maker. "Where are Rossellini, Cocteau, Renoir, Vigo? The great—who are poor in spirit?"

The great who are poor in spirit—that is really Catholic. Or as Thérèse of Lisieux prayed on her deathbed, “May I become little, more and more.”

The Church IS or is meant to be the people on the street. That's what it is to me, so then it doesn't have to be either/or, but rather a continuum or everything part of the same holy thing, namely, the individual human being. Somehow when I came in, only because I had been brought to my knees by being such a terrible, hopeless drunk, I got Oh, that's what Christ died for--the story that makes you both laugh, cry, and want to go on; the broken, sick, brave, conflicted, wild-card beauty of humanity. Blessed are the poor in spirit, because the poor in spirit, if they haven't totally given in to despair, are INTERESTING. So maybe the discussion is what Catholic means in the first place, before we get to what it means to be a Catholic writer...Anyway, thank you Caroline!

They are probably not Catholic because they are merely humanists. They do not believe in the incarnation and therefore nothing after that would be possible: the founding of a Church by Christ, who is God, His death and Resurrection, His sending of the Holy Spirit, His Real Presence in the Eucharist, an actual real hell, purgatory and heaven, or any of the other aspects of supernatural reality which require recognition for someone to be "Catholic". The virtues to which they ascribe are the "natural virtues" discussed at length by pagan philosophers, but which we understand differently based on the supernatural character of Christ and his vision for "Chistian perfection" which must come by using the sanctifying grace of his sacraments, etc. This distinction between natural virtues and the supernatural virtue contemplated and described in the Gospel is covered well by Fr. Garigou LaGrange in "Three Ages of the Interior Life." Pax Christi.

MARIA CALLAS

RING LARDNER

BETTY MacDONALD

LOUISE NEVELSON

"I feel that what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection."

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER

"During one period of chronic depression, it was impossible for me to live without a plastic lobster that I took with me everywhere."

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

"The world will be saved by beauty."

THE BROTHERS QUAY

"It's that little glint, that privileged look into a keyhole, and realizing suddenly that there's this little universe that's probably suffering and barely breathing, but it's pulsating, vibrating, with its own life. That in itself is a metaphor of the universe."

THE KING: "MAN, I REALLY LIKE VEGAS."

Jesus statue found in Elvis's bedroom at Graceland. Photo by H. King.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."

ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter."

BILL MONROE

"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."

BILL W.

"We'll make it not because we're a better people--but because we're a weaker people."

BILL HICKS

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you."

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